Fruit Pizza

To the mind of my younger self, fruit pizzas were a dessert of the highest order. They were beautiful, and they encompassed plenty of sugar:  what’s not to love? A fruit pizza is a tasty and impressive spring concoction that can be as easy as you want it to be, i.e. you can build it out of entirely pre-made treats, or make everything from scratch, or aim for somewhere in between. Any way you choose, these colorful little desserts will still be sure to please at a potluck or on the staff room table. I based my version on this set of directions from Taste of Home magazine, which calls for a dozen three-inch round sugar cookies; obviously, there are also lots of recipes out there for actual pizza-sized fruit pizzas. Use this post for inspiration and make whatever kind of fruit pizzas you want!

In essence, you will need:
sugar cookies
frosting
glaze
fresh fruit pieces

Cookies

In the pictures here, I used store-bought cookies. If you want to make your own cookies, I would suggest a thick, so
ft sugar cookie or a snickerdoodle. Something with a hint of lemon would also be lovely.

Frosting

The frosting can be as simple or as decadent as you want. I recommend a vanilla or cream cheese flavor to let the fruit flavors shine. I whipped up a batch of “nummy-nummy,” a simple and versatile treat invented by my mom’s work supervisor and named by said supervisor’s young son. My sister has put a recipe for it here on her blog, which you should check out regardless of whether you plan to make nummy-nummy or not (hint: you should plan to make it).

Glaze

Glaze is optional… but… it turns your fruit pizzas into something professional-looking, and it’s just a matter of dissolving sugar in a warm pan, basically. The glaze recipe I used was from the Taste of Home article linked above; I’ve copied it here:

In a small saucepan, combine ½ C sugar, 1 TBS cornstarch, ½ C pineapple juice, ¼ C water and 2 TBS lemon juice until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Transfer to a small bowl; refrigerate until cooled but not set.

Fruit

I bought one of those containers of precut mixed fruit from the grocery store to save myself time and also to get a better variety of fruit without buying more than I needed. If you are indeed using small round cookies instead of a single large cookie, consider how many different fruit pieces you want to be able to fit on a single “pizza” and accordingly cut the fruit into an appropriate size. There are no rules about what fruits should or shouldn’t be on your pizza, so pick pretty colors! Buy what you like!

Assembly

Once you have all your cookies, frosting, glaze, and fruit assembled and ready, prepare your space and get started!

1. Find some trays, plates, pans, etc. to spread your “empty” cookies out across; they can stay where they are once you’ve decorated them, because you can’t stack them up once finished.

2. Frost your cookies. Be generous with your frosting so there is plenty of “glue” to keep the fruit in place. Don’t worry about making it smooth and pretty, just even.

3. Arrange the fruit pieces. You can try to arrange things in patterns, or randomly. You can see there is a mix of approaches on mine.

4. Use a small spoon to pour some glaze gently over each fruit pizza. I found that it worked best to pour the glaze on the tallest fruits and then gently spread it from there as needed (depending on how thick your glaze turned out). You can be pretty generous with the glaze, though of course more glaze will also equal more mess.

And that’s it! It will take you some time to put together all of your pizzas, but ultimately this is a simple dessert to make given how impressive it looks in the end. Enjoy!